Dimming Led Panels Externally (Not Using On Board Dimmer)

We have a number of Led Panels that all have built in dimmers. We are rigging them into a grid thats 12 feet above our heads so we wanted to control/dim them from a lighting board and /or with some hand squeezers. The plan is to place the built in dimmers that are on the lights at 100% and then dim remotely from the ground.Any reason why this would not work. Was curious if they will flicker or possibly damage the panels in any way?

Unless they are specifically designed to, like Quasar Tubes or some domestic LED replacement lamps, MOST LED units will not dim using traditional dimmers.

Makes about as much sense electronically as putting a TV on a hand squeezer to control the brightness.

There is so much electronics in between the power input and the LED emmiters themselves, in most cases a dimmer at best will cause the power supply unit to work rather hard before going into a fault mode, at worst do catestrophic damage to the heads.

It'll be more trouble than it's worth. BUT you can replace the onboard pots with Bourns motorized pots and figure out a way to control those motors. That'll do what you want. BUT at that point, you'll have spent more time/energy than just finding DMX'able lights.

Matthew is 100% correct. And almost all current LED lights use PWM dimming which is switching on/off incredibly rapidly at full power to the LED's themselves. Dimming" the power to them will dim the input power - which gets converted to a specific voltage of DC before the LED driver - meaning that you'll do nothing until you hit a point at which the driver doesn't have enough current, then it'll shut off.